We worked with British Heart Foundation to radically overhaul their in memoriam and in celebration destinations to meet the needs of a growing market.

Sector-leading digital experiences

Putting users at the heart of the product

Both Gift of Hope and Give in Celebration have users at their heart. With this in mind our initial focus was to create an improved user experience, through research and prototyping, for new site users and page creators. We also needed to ensure that existing content remained intact; these are two of BHF’s most popular, and sensitive, fundraising destinations so have a siginificant amount of active users.
Prototypes were fully responsive and tested with users and feedback was incorporated into subsequent iterations until we reached a solution that fit the bill.

“Our supporters are so important to our life saving research that we wanted to make sure their experience in using these digital experiences was sector-leading. We think the relaunched products set the bar in how to handle in memory and in celebration digital destinations.”

– Holly Patton, Legacy Marketing Manager,
British Heart Foundation

“We have extensive experience in branded charity destinations, but it's always a welcome design challenge to make each one stand apart. We developed a number of strong routes, and collaborated closely with the BHF team to hone them to the final designs.”

– Stewart Sear, Creative Director, Addition

Design challenge

Balancing the brand

The BHF brand is bold and striking, as befits a charity whose core message and fundraising revolves around its life saving research. We needed to update the visual identity of both products to bring them in line with this brand, whilst balancing the sensitivity of the audiences - especially with an In memoriam product like Gift of Hope – who may still be mourning the loss of a loved one.

Over the years, the team at Addition have created several tribute fund sites for some of the biggest charities in the country, all of which had the same requirements that needed addressing, so we certainly had the right expertise to address this challenge.

Drawing on this experience and our years of UI & UX design skills, we were able to balance the striking BHF visual style with the need of the In memoriam user. We used the imagery thoughtfully, creating a sense of openness and calm that kept the focus on the key user journeys: setting up or finding a fund.

Collaborating with the charity

Creating an effective and modern design

Collaboration with the teams at BHF was key and we shared our progress continuously, ensuring that they understood how all the various elements would flow throughout and easing any anxiety they may have had, especially around the ‘research’ message.

This recognition of the importance of brand, the needs of the in memoriam audience and the overall user experience ensured that we were able to create an effective and modern design that was well received by all the teams at BHF, and more importantly of course, the users themselves as highlighted by the results below.

Unified, integrated management

Behind the scenes

It was understood from the very beginning of the project that it wasn’t just about the users – there was also a desire to save BHF admin staff time and effort. With this in mind, a single management interface to handle both in memoriam and in celebration funds and pages was envisaged during the prototyping stage of the product and realised during the design and build process.

Transactional functions are also a major facet of the product - we use best-of-breed third party accounts, not bespoke arrangements: payments are done via Stripe; emails are handled through DotMailer.

“Creating a custom product and supporter experience doesn't rule out using standard services where it makes sense to save time, money and provide a great ready-made UX. Stripe is a fantastic example of a plug-in-able tech that is making payments simpler and easier to implement, so you can get to market quicker.”

– Louise Ryan, Head of Digital Product Development, Addition

Results

Since launching Gift of Hope and Give in Celebration in September 2016 the creation of new funds has increased by 54% on the previous 2 months; average donations increased by 67% and total donations is up 14%.

There has also been a huge increase in the creation of events associated with funds – up 750% on the 2 months prior to launch. Lastly, we have seen a 361% increase in donations being made to in celebration funds.

Digital experiences

Some of the unique digital experiences we have crafted in collaboration with our clients.